Surly they will go "all in" in the true Buttcoiner fashion, liquidate everything buy BTC and live from a diet of rice and beans for the next decade.

Yes, indeed, the way I am doing. So now, get a life of your own, please.

Please do I'll be laughing all the harder if you actually were somebody reasonably wealthy and blown it all up on a delusional dream.

What you don't seem to understand, is that we rich make more money than we need even without much working for it, so this in essence gives us freedom to do what we want, with the money we already have. Good night.

I understand perfectly.What you don't seem to understand is that you are not the ones in control here

USD showing their hand on mt gox orderbook would buy 1.4 million bitcoins at $10 each.

Sit back and watch.

Doesn't matter. The point is that this is money that is interested in bitcoin. $10 is not sustainable. Zero or much higher is sustainable.

from January 1 2012 to December 31 2012 the price more than doubled from around 6 to around 14. 133% growth in a year is absolutely huge, but could possibly be expected given that bitcoin is a very new thing slowly gaining in awareness and acceptance, and I wouldn't be surprised if the bitcoin economy also doubled in that time.

Then along came the people like mr rich suit in this thread, who bought up all the BTC they could find, not to use as a futuristic currency, but to hold as a commodity so it could hopefully make them money.

People throw around the 210 million dollars at $20 figure as the market cap. You have to remember it's much much lower, because many of those coins are held and not for sale by early adopters, and many have been lost or forgotten. at the start of 2013, it's pretty realistic to say that $10 million would pretty much buy you control of the liquid bitcoin market.

The results are what we saw happen this year, mr rich suit, the winklefloss brothers, probably a few wall street types and other wealthy speculators bought up most of the liquid market. This drives prices ever higher in a deflationary death spiral, especially if it was combined with human or algorithmic market manipulation. There was no underlying 1000% in 3 month increase in the bitcoin economy, no new big company suddenly accepting bitcoin as payment. Silk road is still a huge majority of the market for people who use bitcoin as a currency. The news articles about bitcoin didn't start appearing until it was already bubbling hard and doubling every month, no every 2 weeks, no every week!

A return to what it was at end of 2012, plus or minus 50% is the most likely result given the fundamentals. $0 is possible, and $100 is possible, but neither of those two results would likely result in a stable price.

The real problem is that bitcoin was designed as a currency, but is this year being used by the vast majority of its holders as a high risk high return high volatility speculative commodity.

No one wants their currency to be speculative high risk high volatility, as they risk losing money just by buying something. No way will Amazon, Google, Apple or any seriously big potential players offer this as an option until it is stable.

The market will fix this itself, I can think of two possible outcomes, I'm sure there are others though.

1) BTC will return to something close to its stable value last year. In this case mr rich suit (remember he said "I only bought a meaningful number of bitcoins this year", and all his high finance type buddies will end up either with losses, or have sold out to a greater fool and made their money. Either way they'll move on to something less stable and more speculative until the next bubble and bitcoin will get a lot of liquidity back. Meanwhile bitcoin is back on the road to more widespread adoption as a currency.2) liquidity will stay low, and bitcoins will fluctuate from $100, to $500, to $50, then back to maybe $100 or $1000. Many will make a fortune. An identical number will lose a fortune. all the big companies like Silk Road (I use the term company loosely there) and Wordpress will switch over to litecoin or a different crypto currency, and bitcoin will just be a bunch of bytes, used for nothing but a bunch of people selling coins back and forth to eachother while hoping to come out on top (i.e satoshi dice with lower transaction fees)

from January 1 2012 to December 31 2012 the price more than doubled from around 6 to around 14. 133% growth in a year is absolutely huge, but could possibly be expected given that bitcoin is a very new thing slowly gaining in awareness and acceptance, and I wouldn't be surprised if the bitcoin economy also doubled in that time.

Then along came the people like mr rich suit in this thread, who bought up all the BTC they could find, not to use as a futuristic currency, but to hold as a commodity so it could hopefully make them money.

People throw around the 210 million dollars at $20 figure as the market cap. You have to remember it's much much lower, because many of those coins are held and not for sale by early adopters, and many have been lost or forgotten. at the start of 2013, it's pretty realistic to say that $10 million would pretty much buy you control of the liquid bitcoin market.

The results are what we saw happen this year, mr rich suit, the winklefloss brothers, probably a few wall street types and other wealthy speculators bought up most of the liquid market. This drives prices ever higher in a deflationary death spiral, especially if it was combined with human or algorithmic market manipulation. There was no underlying 1000% in 3 month increase in the bitcoin economy, no new big company suddenly accepting bitcoin as payment. Silk road is still a huge majority of the market for people who use bitcoin as a currency. The news articles about bitcoin didn't start appearing until it was already bubbling hard and doubling every month, no every 2 weeks, no every week!

A return to what it was at end of 2012, plus or minus 50% is the most likely result given the fundamentals. $0 is possible, and $100 is possible, but neither of those two results would likely result in a stable price.

The real problem is that bitcoin was designed as a currency, but is this year being used by the vast majority of its holders as a high risk high return high volatility speculative commodity.

No one wants their currency to be speculative high risk high volatility, as they risk losing money just by buying something. No way will Amazon, Google, Apple or any seriously big potential players offer this as an option until it is stable.

The market will fix this itself, I can think of two possible outcomes, I'm sure there are others though.

1) BTC will return to something close to its stable value last year. In this case mr rich suit (remember he said "I only bought a meaningful number of bitcoins this year", and all his high finance type buddies will end up either with losses, or have sold out to a greater fool and made their money. Either way they'll move on to something less stable and more speculative until the next bubble and bitcoin will get a lot of liquidity back. Meanwhile bitcoin is back on the road to more widespread adoption as a currency.2) liquidity will stay low, and bitcoins will fluctuate from $100, to $500, to $50, then back to maybe $100 or $1000. Many will make a fortune. An identical number will lose a fortune. all the big companies like Silk Road (I use the term company loosely there) and Wordpress will switch over to litecoin or a different crypto currency, and bitcoin will just be a bunch of bytes, used for nothing but a bunch of people selling coins back and forth to eachother while hoping to come out on top (i.e satoshi dice with lower transaction fees)

These are mutually exclusive claims. Sorry, but now that people are aware of this thing, if bitcoin is to be stable one needs to be worth >10k so it is not easily manipulated. This is the only way. Not saying this will happen, but it is necessary for stability.

These are mutually exclusive claims. Sorry, but now that people are aware of this thing, if bitcoin is to be stable one needs to be worth >10k so it is not easily manipulated. This is the only way. Not saying this will happen, but it is necessary for stability.

I'm sorry, what you said makes no sense at all. you would need all the worlds governments working together in order to manipulate bitcoin to $10,000 in the first place. You either ignored liquidity or don't understand the concept as it relates to commodities.

Then along came the people like mr rich suit in this thread, who bought up all the BTC they could find, not to use as a futuristic currency, but to hold as a commodity so it could hopefully make them money.

The real problem is that bitcoin was designed as a currency, but is this year being used by the vast majority of its holders as a high risk high return high volatility speculative commodity.

1) BTC will return to something close to its stable value last year. In this case mr rich suit (remember he said "I only bought a meaningful number of bitcoins this year", and all his high finance type buddies will end up either with losses, or have sold out to a greater fool and made their money. Either way they'll move on to something less stable and more speculative until the next bubble and bitcoin will get a lot of liquidity back. Meanwhile bitcoin is back on the road to more widespread adoption as a currency.2) liquidity will stay low, and bitcoins will fluctuate from $100, to $500, to $50, then back to maybe $100 or $1000. Many will make a fortune. An identical number will lose a fortune. all the big companies like Silk Road (I use the term company loosely there) and Wordpress will switch over to litecoin or a different crypto currency, and bitcoin will just be a bunch of bytes, used for nothing but a bunch of people selling coins back and forth to eachother while hoping to come out on top (i.e satoshi dice with lower transaction fees)

Thank you for your concerns. I take the time to explain some of the motivations behind my actions, related to the quoted part of your post.

1. Yes, we bought up pretty much all we could find. The deciding moment was the resilience of Bitcoin community in the face of the fork last month. The issue was fixed with 10x more professionalism and determination than can be found in wall street. This gave me the confidence to go "all-in". I realize that every one of the current USD/BTC exchanges is unable to cope with the demand, but that will not affect the bitcoin protocol. I have no reason to panic if Mt.Gox closes down entirely. The people will find the way to buy bitcoins if they want them. The premier newspaper in Finland ran a 2-page article on Bitcoin today, without a single fundamental misunderstanding. I will roll-out a comprehensive newspaper ad campaign next week in all Finnish newspapers with 100k+ readership. I am selling bitcoins to people for a 10% fee. Bitcoin is so small at present, the value of the real estate in 1 kilometer radius from my house is more than an order of magnitude bigger. Give me 3 months to raise the awareness, so I can buy all the bitcoins anyone wants to sell for sub-$50, to sell them OTC for profit.

2. I don't believe the majority of bitcoins are in speculative hands. Speculators don't hold positions for long, and prefer to use leverage, options, etc. and not own the underlying. Even if there are many speculators out there in number, the number of physical bitcoins they hold at any given moment is negligible, by which I mean less than BTC500,000.

3. There is no way for bitcoin to return to any stable value less than $10,000. What you don't seem to understand is the supply/demand dynamics. Ben Bernanke has said, "there is this technology called printing press". As he speaks the truth, and there actually is such a technology, everyone should be aware that he can cap dollar's appreciation at any time by just doling out $100,000 of physical or digital cash to every citizen of his country (note: currently USD is not created by printing press, rather than loaned out at interest, which is a diametric opposite of a printing press - but he nevertheless has the printing press also, and the means to use it).

With bitcoin, there is no printing press. Barring a flaw in the protocol, nobody can create bitcoins at will. This leaves bitcoin's fate (as regards to its purchasing power) to be decided in the open market between the current bitcoin holders and current fiat holders. A popular misunderstanding is that the price of something is somehow decided by popular vote. If 90% are bearish on bitcoin, its value should decrease, don't you think so? I am afraid you are wrong. The price is decided by the highest bidder, compared to the lowest seller. There are only so many bitcoins out there, and much more dollars (and real physical wealth, such as gold, silver, land, RE, shares of income-generating businesses, which can also be exchanged for bitcoins). Last week, Wikileaks divulged that there is $32 trillion parked in a certain tax haven. If 0.01% of this money wants to buy out all the bitcoins in existence, they would be valued at $290 per. In reality, about 90% of bitcoins are not for sale at below that price, so basically a sudden influx of $3 billion to bitcoin, would raise its price far above $1000.

In a free market, only the ones that trade, have a vote. If you don't have any bitcoins that you are willing to part with, you have pretty little business trying to force its price down. If you don't have fiat (or anything else valuable) that you are willing to part with, you have not much chance to raise the price of bitcoins. Currently only about 100,000 people in the world are influencing bitcoin's price in any way. When the rest join in, the only candidate they have in their ballot is "UP". Shorting bitcoins is not only hazardous due to the instability of the platforms, and stupid, because the price is in uptrend, it is also almost impossible, because the large buyers/holders of bitcoins will take delivery, abolishing the chance to naked short it, up to any meaningful degree.

4. I knew of Bitcoin when it was still a non-traded currency. I chose my entry point to be much later, when I could trade the fiat (that I am good at making in the meantime) for bitcoins with ease. Now I recently decided to go all-in, which means that I have invested everything that I can afford to lose. Believe me, I don't regret for a second if the technology blows up. I still have my emergency gold and silver, my other businesses, my family, and my Lord. In the event that nobody else is buying bitcoins, I will buy them all the way to the bottom, and we will continue to play poker with the 10+ million bitcoins with my friends, hosted by the sole functioning node in my engine room. I am having a serious fun with this, I am grateful to satoshi, early adopters, devteam and (even) the operators of Mt.Gox for allowing me this chance to influence history. I will not lose my weekly bottle of Riesling no matter what happens to the price. My aim is to develop a healthy bitcoin brokerage, and continue to run it until I move on to other things. At that time I will sell it to the big guys coming after me, for 10,000 bitcoins (+ the book value). The big boys will not buy anything for less than $500 million, so either we make it or break it.

5. I would be sorry to see if you sell out too early. May I suggest you to use the method I deviced for myself, when I still had the mindset of "selling to the strength". After the initial investment, you just wait for the price to double. As it doubles, you sell 25% (or whatever you are comfortable with, as long as it is less than 50%). If it doubles again, you sell 25% of the rest. Repetitio ad infinitum. This way the dollar value of your remaining bitcoins can only ever grow (provided that bitcoin goes up, of course). Also your living standard increases all the time. If it crashes, you still win.